News

There are a lot of people out there who see the original Deus Ex as one of the finest games ever made, with its roll-your-own hybrid of first person shooter, role playing, and stealth attributes wrapped around a fantastic dystopian story. The love for this game continues even now, almost a decade and a mediocre sequel later; for that reason, many have been both hopeful and fearful of the third entry, should it ever arrive.

Now, you may be wondering, why does this have anything to do with our beloved Square Enix and its massive echelon of games? Well, the Deus Ex series belongs to Eidos. And Eidos belongs to Square Enix. And, in the nature of business as we know it, they're always looking for synergy across business units. So, here you go: pre-rendered cutscenes for Deus Ex 3 will be rendered by the folks at Square Enix Tokyo, the very same who have produced cinematics for your favorite SE RPGs over the years. Will it be the "A" team, the folks who just finished cranking out work for Final Fantasy XIII? Might it be some "B" team, the types who created the much less attractive FMVs from the Playstation re-releases many a year ago? Does Deus Ex even need these scenes? Don't forget that many of the cutscenes in the previous games change based on player decisions, so this might require a change to the core play mechanics.

What do you think of these events? Do we need more games with Square Enix-style cinemas? Will the design philosophies of the two offices clash? We might yet find out next year.

Source: EDGE

Massive amount of Square Enix news tidbits this week, since I took a couple unplanned weeks off, there. Sorry about that, I know that all of you out there are dying to not comment on these posts.

As usual, most of the small news items you might have missed have to do with Final Fantasy XIII. You know, it's coming out in Japan next week and all. With regard specifically to the Japanese version, you might have missed the reveal of this game's Cid, with the surname of Raines. He's meant to be a general in one of the military factions in the plot; however, as is usual, he doesn't seem to have much traditional military look to him. You'll see him somewhere along the line in a game that is fifty-plus hours long, according to director Motumu Toriyama. And, as you may have noticed along the way, the official box art for the US and European versions of FFXIII was first published this week, too. To me, personally, it seems a bit too minimalist, but if you still had any doubts about seeing it for the Xbox 360, well, rest assured that this is not a fake.

With all that real game-type news out of the way, check out some of the goofy hype machine that's still working in support of the new flagship release. If you're in Japan, you can get the chance to smell like Lightning (the character, obviously, not the meteorological event). It's peachy! It's rosey! It's musky! It's over eighty bucks! Probably tough to import, too, as it's no doubt a flammable liquid. Over here, though, your goodies are a little less pricey and a little more useless. Thanks to all the people who tweeted about Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox (you're welcome - ugh), anyone who registers for it on Xbox.com will get, sometime this month, a free baby Chocobo for their Xbox Live avatar. Certainly cheaper than the pets you can buy; I'm sure it will go well with my University of Illinois hoodie just fine, though.

Now, let's move on, shall we? Despite the fact that Squenix is laying off again, in Europe, there are still new releases in other series coming soon. An unofficial Twitter announcment implies that Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep will in fact make it out of Japan, notwithstanding any rumbles to the contrary. Not only that, you'll also get to interact with Zack of the Final Fantasy VII universe. Does that get a fangirl squee out of anyone? Yeah, didn't really think so. Finally, on the Enix side of the house, note that a western release of Dragon Quest IX has just gotten a little closer to reality, now that the game's name has been trademarked in several languages for the European Union. Leave a slot in your DS for 2010 for a cooperative, customizable JRPG, it seems.

Again, apologies for missing a couple weeks. It probably will happen again pretty soon, given the holidays coming up, so if you feel like filling my shoes, go for it!

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, Go Nintendo

The Square Enix news tidbits for this week get a big flourish, as Squenix have just officially dated Final Fantasy XIII for North America (and, if you believe the video, also probably Europe?). The games for the two platforms will launch simultaneously on 9 March, 2010, which seems pretty fast; however, Yoichi Wada did just say the other day that the company was done with the Japanese version and was already applying just the final touches to the Western one. The official release announcement comes with a slick video as well, which you can watch at Kotaku or, probably, on Playstation Home.

If you haven't preordered yet, you certainly can - AmaCoN has not updated the release date as yet, but it surely will quite soon.

That's the big news of the day, but you might also be interested to know that Dragon Quest VI for the Nintendo DS has been officially dated for Japan, and that the first official release for the West should follow soon after; additionally, the company brought forth two more classes for Final Fantasy XIV, the Pugilist and Gladiator, silhouetted against the very same backdrop we've all already seen.

Have a good weekend, and I hope to see your Final Fantasy XIII preorders showing up in AmaCoN quite soon!

First news tidbits for November; possibly also the start of the AmaCoN Holiday Rush™? Seriously, get all your friends and family to buy stuff from AmaCoN this holiday. It usually makes up about 30% of our revenue for the year.

Anyway, here are some Square Enix News Tidbits for you. With the launch of Final Fantasy XIII in Japan getting ever closer, Square Enix have announced the release date of the official soundtrack. There will be, kind of typically, two versions—a four disc standard and five disc limited edition, with the differences being packaging, an extra disc with parts or all of Episode Zero and of course availability. Both sets will be available on 27 January in Japan, and with only about $14 difference in cost, I predict that there will be a rush for the more special-er version.

For those who don't care about the Japanese accouterments, though, you can note that Yoichi Wada thinks that "progress is good" on the Western front, and that he thinks it's possible to see a launch either in Europe, North America, or both before the end of April 2010. That seems like marketing talk, and I would expect to be waiting a bit longer than that, personally. AmaCoN still has it for 20 June 2010, for instance.

On the business front, it seems that the layoffs previously reported are now mainly done, with a grand total of ten percent cut globally. Perhaps not surprisingly, revenues for the last half-year were also up by almost exactly a third; of course, our readers who know a bit about business also know that revenues are almost never the same as profits.



Source: GamesIndustry, Kotaku

For those of you who have seen or heard Distant Worlds, perhaps you're saddened by the fact that it tends to focus on the work of Nobuo Uematsu and not the smaller contributions from other composers to the collection of Final Fantasy music. Well, if you can get to Japan in the next couple weeks, you'll have the chance to meet and listen to some like-minded souls, as a non-official production of music from Final Fantasy Tactics will soon take place in Tokyo.

Long lauded for its militaristic feel, difference from "typical" Final Fantasy music, and general quality, the score by Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata is extensive but has never received a promoted public performance treatment. On 22 November, though, that will change as a group of performers brought together specifically for this show will put on two matinee performances before calling it a day, and presumably, an end to the small concert series. The shows purport to play over sixty tracks from the game, custom-arranged into one or more medleys.

Of course, this sort of thing can only happen in Japan; perhaps someday through the power of the interwebs we can all enjoy what sounds like a great and overdue concept.

Source: Kotaku

We've been doing some behind-the-scenes work over the last couple weeks or so that you might have seen as you peruse the site; while we're not quite done with everything, I wanted to give you guys the heads-up both so you can enjoy the new stuff and also keep an eye out and report anything you see that looks funny while we continue to work.

The main thing that I've been working on recently is some updates to the way our still-new news section works. I've updated the main site RSS feed to now link directly to news articles, making it easier for you to read and comment without having to get all the way into the forums from the RSS feed. Note that if you subscribed to the old RSS feed, you can continue to use it, but you should really consider upgrading to the new one, as it will give you full stories and cleaner links to read and comment.

An added benefit to the new feed system is that we've also made RSS feeds for all of our news categories, too. If you have a particular interest in just one part of our news, such as News from Japan, you can RSS it directly and filter news via individual feeds.

I've also added a feature where you can share CoN news via Facebook, simply by clicking a couple links, so your friends can be as knowledgeable about the news we cover as you are. I'll be refining this feature in the near future, as well as possibly adding more functionality, such as the ability to tweet our news via your Twitter account as well.

Meanwhile, Tiddles and I, with some early help from footbigmike, Dragon_Fire, Hanyou, Del S and Olly, have done some tweaking to the forums. You probably won't notice most of the changes, as they're very specific to the server-side operation and security of the forums, but they do lay the groundwork for some other server upgrades that we're hoping to do quite soon indeed that will allow us to improve overall site security and possibly add other new features down the road.

So, please keep using the site just as you always have, and if you have any problems, let us know right away in the Errors and Troubleshooting forum. Thanks!